Sardines in olive oil
A shop in Lisbon exclusively sold sardines
this interested me since my Norwegian mother
had worked at a factory selling tinned sardines
I asked if they had sardines from other country
they didn't but told me in tinned bacalao they
cod fish came from Norway
I noticed sardines in olive oil with the year the tin
was made, began from 1905 to 2024
but the years from 1930 to 1943 were missing
I asked why, but no one knew, I think no one had
noticed the gap
The staff at the shop, when I told them about
my mother was charmed and gave me a couple
of sardine tins from 1944
Cats in costume on an October Halloween
Dressed as robots, dogs, and a beauty queen.
Tromping along in a line, from door to door.
Smelling their chocolate candies, but wanting more.
Why don’t they give us sardines? One kit doth ask.
They cannot afford it said her pal in a butterfly mask.
How about pizza with anchovies? She does suggest.
Snickers and Reeses, says another who likes them the best
OCTAVE:
LORD, as morn yields to noon (or dawn) my SONnet will please, tease, release:
I greet thee, having access to Your throne by Jesus
And His sacrifice on Calvary: We pray against the Virus
With a sunshiny name, an aura of a name, "a garland" ...
Corona Virus, COVID-19, or SARS-Cov-2, Thy Hand
Is mighty and righteous, always Righteous, even in judgment
God of Grace and Love, forgiveness and Provisioning
Forgive me my greed, envy, jealousy, smallness and scheming
SESTET:
I intercede for others now, nations and peoples, as did Moses & Joshua
All countries that begin with the letter "F" even if U need to teach us to be FAIR
Bless little Fiji, so steeped in tourism & history (sugar slavery) now at peace
Formosa, now called Taiwan, but so many islands, I cannot list them all
In heart of Europe, Franc, once like UK a great colonizer, forgive France ...
We forgive tourists & others as we're forgiven! CORONA time when unity begins
imagine the sardines
in the tube
swimming round and round
against an unceasing
mock current
do they know their place?
Doomed to live as an aquatic chandelier
as perpetual showmen for the sake of our “knowledge”
Do they know?
Im terrified to think that they might not,
because then maybe we dont either.
I was addicted to you from the very beginning
They say people can be drugs,
But i didn’t understand what they meant
Until you came into my life.
The sun shined brighter,
The days were longer,
The bids sung louder,
Everything seemed like a fairytale-
Fake.
The first time you let me down,
I stayed away without a second thought,
Without an ounce of hesitation,
For months.
I don’t know how i did it.
I wish i knew how i did it.
But i came back.
Everything about you had me in a trance
You had me wrapped around your finger.
You said go,
And i went.
They told me to stop while i’m ahead,
While i still have my head,
But did i listen?
Of course not.
I thought you were the love of my life,
That our love was going to be the love of the century.
Why would i stay away?
And then it started coming back to me,
And then i started to realize
What you were doing.
But i still stayed.
I stayed,
And it hurt me so bad
When you left.
You left,
And the illusion,
The fairytale,
Was broken.
I saw through the cracks
I saw what was really going on
I saw what you wanted from me
I know that you see how badly i’m hurting.
Through the water they glide,
an immense mosaic of millions of silvery fish
on their migratory run,
obeying a call immemorial,
a mystery of aquatic unison
choreographed by instinct primordial.
They billow,
a grainy smoke cloud
in which light drowns.
A ruffling,
like an enormous bedspread
being shaken out in slow motion
by an invisible giant.
They turn into a mesh,
glistening, spinning around, tightening,
a net woven with fish for catching water.
They stretch,
a submerged galaxy
unspooling into a braided rope
in a blue universe.
They bank,
and silver ripples across the shoal,
a wheat field touched by a soaking breeze.
Then they move on,
flashing by,
like underwater rain falling sideways.
Before the predators get to them,
my eyes are feasting.
Sardines on the Sand
Two Sardines danced hand in hand
At their wedding upon the sand
As a Herring played the violin.
A portly porpoise clothed in grey
Greeted guests from far away.
A pair of Cod beheld the scene,
The bride was dressed in seaweed green
And an Octopus sang a gliforal song
As the assembly wept into oyster shells,
While an elderly Crab played whale bone bells.
A gumley Anchovy bore the ring
As the Vicar asked the choir to sing.
Then a choir of Kipper sang on the strand,
And throngs of Mullet from far and wide
Danced by that strong mantigious tide.
Then there came a flumifinous roar
As the tide surged upon that shore
And all the party were swept away.
All on that bright framtitious day.
19/08/16
For the contest 'In the Style of my Favourite Poet.
Sponsored by The Seeker
Sardines and Hunger
We are leaving tomorrow for Lisbon it will be Sunday
and the traffic will be going to Algarve an obvious place
that has little to offer but sand in your shoes and
ready prepared food that insist it is authentically for
the region or something like that. After preparing we
noticed we had no food for the evening meal only a tin of
Portuguese sardines and Swedish tasteless flatbread
bought at an IKEA where you can bay flat packs
furniture named E. Karlson they have a department at
the factory to come up with names that are meaningless.
I can`t think of any putting a desk together and saying:
have you seen my E. Karlson
So we shared the tin of sardines and felt quite biblical.
After my wife had fallen asleep I took out her false teeth
and hungrily sucked them clean.